Dedication

God is teaching you by His great picture book of nature to wait, to sow your seed, and wait for the slow ripening of the harvest under the patient heavens. He does not give you perfect and full-formed things at once. He sows the seeds of things that will gradually grow and ripen and bear fruit. He gives buds first, and then full unfolded blossoms, and then perfect fruit. —Hugh Macmillan (c.1850), adapted